The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop the GNU operating system, a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software—software which respects your freedom. Unix-like operating systems are built from a software collection of applications, libraries, and developer tools—plus a program to allocate resources and talk to the hardware, known as a kernel. [...] The combination of GNU and Linux is the GNU/Linux operating system, now used by millions and sometimes incorrectly called simply “Linux”. The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix!”

The aim of the GNU Project is to produce a totally free operating system. While the GNU kernel has not reached a stable version, the project has resulted in the creation of many tools that power most Unix-like operating systems. Arch Linux is such a system, using GNU software like the GRUB bootloader, Bash shell, and numerous other utilities and libraries.

Contents

The Base System

At the end of the installation process, an Arch system is nothing more than the Linux Kernel, the GNU toolchain, and a few command line tools. The minimal install normally contains the entire base group.

Kernel

While Hurd, the GNU Kernel, is under active development, there is not yet a stable version. For this reason Arch and most other GNU based systems use the Linux Kernel. The Arch Hurd Project aims to port Arch Linux to the Hurd kernel.

Software Collection

glibc — glibc is GNU's implementation of the C library. Despite its name, it also supports C++ and indirectly other languages. It defines the system calls and other basic facilities such as open, malloc, printf, exit.